Season 3, Episode 2 Recap: How Bright the Moon
Penelope has her Drew Barrymore moment and Lady F urges her daughters to get ‘familiar’ with their husbands.
We are back with Episode 2, having left Penelope and Colin confirming that they are friends (yes, really, just friends) and that the newly bronzed and worldly wise Colin, if we are to believe the rather bizarre threesome scene later on in the episode, will help Penelope to snag a husband. Episode 2 is all about putting the plan into action and the first port of call is a walk in Rotten Row (a favourite hang out during the Regency located in Hyde Park, London). Colin coaches Pen on the art of flirting, advising her to wave a fan and flutter her eyelashes, telling her ‘That is often all it takes. Men are quite simple beings.’ I feel like Colin is about to prove his own point by the end of the Ep but we shall see.
However, after years as a wallflower, Penelope’s flirting skills don’t appear to be up to much, cue her hilarious attempts at talking to a group of eligible bachelors (Side note: I love Nicola Coughlan’s performance. Obviously, we knew she was amazing at comedy from Derry Girls but she brings a lightness and fun to the main love interest role that we haven’t seen in previous seasons and it feels that the character is more rounded because of it).
Having given up on that particular outing, the pair meet up again while out shopping and Penelope tells Colin that she wants to get married so that she may have her freedom. It’s a clever reminder that the world in which Bridgerton is set was strictly controlled for unmarried women. We often think of marriage in the Regency as women giving up their freedom to ‘belong’ to their husband, as once a wife they had very little individual rights, for example their property would become their husband’s. However, it is a little more complex than that and it is interesting to see the writers explore this through Penelope. Young women would have been strictly controlled by their mothers and not allowed to be alone unchaperoned with a man (slight plot hole here Bridgerton but we’ll forgive you as Pen’s maid seems to be hovering in this scene). Conversely marriage presented an opportunity to run her own household, to make decisions on who she spent time with and, as Benedict observes later on, society didn’t seem to are what people did once they were married, all the rules were to keep the marriage mart churning. For young women who had so little agency, marriage could prove an attractive option.
Back to Colin and Pen, who have now moved to the Bridgerton’s house where Colin hopes that Penelope will relax there and be able to flirt. Pen is not sure about it at all, as she is worried that Eloise, who she has fallen out with, will not want her there. However Colin reassures her that she is out for the day. Penelope does indeed relax at the Bridgerton’s, however it’s more to do with the object of her affection rather than the pale blue chaise longue in the drawing room.
‘Deep inside I know that I can be clever and amusing but somehow my character gets lost between my heart and my mouth and I find myself saying the wrong thing or nothing at all.’
She takes one look at Colin and manages to come up with something romantic and disarming and the pair lock eyes.
When Eloise returns unexpectedly, Penelope makes a dash for the study and ends up reading some of Colin’s steamy diary entries. When he catches her a glass lamp is knocked over and he cuts his hand, which is a great opportunity for our girl to step in and dress his wound, incredibly slowly, while telling him his writing is rather good - I mean who could resist that? When Penelope leaves, Eloise spots her. She later tells Colin that he shouldn’t be helping Penelope, which understandably Colin finds very confusing as up until recently they were best friends.
Now we move to a ball for the Ton, the set piece of almost every episode of Bridgerton and one where we all try and work out which modern track has been given a new lease of life by the show’s string quartet. This time it’s Jealous by Nick Jonas and that is exactly what Colin is when he sees Penelope’s flirting lessons have clearly worked when she talks to Lord Remington.
Meanwhile, Eloise tells mean girl Cressida, who doesn’t seem very mean girl at all this season, that Colin is tutoring Penelope on the dark arts of finding a husband and word quickly gets out. When a group of Mamas question why Colin is helping a spinster, ‘so beyond hope of success,’ Penelope is mortified and leaves, Colin is angry with Eloise and Eloise is cross at Cressida, who it turns out didn’t spill the beans (see, not a mean girl this season).
At the same time, the Queen overhears Francesca Bridgerton playing the piano and is enchanted. She has finally found her ‘diamond’ of the season it seems. However, Francesca doesn’t seem too invested in the marriage market, telling her mother that she is merely looking for a good enough husband, not a great love.
Aside from the Colin/Penelope story of the episode, by far the best interactions are with the Featherington sisters and their pushy Mama, Lady Featherington. Keen to have a legitimate heir to the Featherington fortune, Lady F encourages her daughters to get ‘familiar’ with their husbands. Initially Prudence is reluctant as it ‘flattens her hair’ while Philippa reports that she lies with her husband, Mr Finch, regularly.
However, as we have seen before in Bridgerton, there seems to be a severe lack of knowledge when it comes to the mechanics of sex among the young ladies of society. The use of coded language by Mamas trying to save their blushes has left women like Pru and Philippa (and Daphne in Season 1) clueless, as opposed to the young men of the Ton who seem like they get a thorough education among the brothels of London (did you know 1 in 5 people were estimated to have syphilis during the Regency?). Lady Featherington tries to explain things to her daughters only to find Philippa doesn’t know what she’s talking about…
Lady F: ‘A woman’s pleasure is somewhat more subtle than a man. You see when he inserts himself—’
Philippa: ‘Inserts himself? Inserts himself where?’
I think this joke will run for the season but also makes a larger point about how ill equipped young women were when entering into lifelong marriages during the period, compared with their male counterparts.
The next evening, under cover of darkness, Colin comes to check on Penelope in the Featherington’s garden. And it is here that Penelope has her full Drew Barrymore Never Been Kissed (circa 1999) moment. Resigned to her fate as a spinster, she asks him to kiss her, just once. And Colin, sporting a bouncy quiff that seems to have got larger as the episode has gone on, obliges. To be clear this isn’t a quick peck, it’s a full on kiss against the garden wall, which judging by Colin’s face as Pen turns to go back inside the house, has ignited something inside of him…
Coming up:
We recap Episode 3. Will this ‘one’ kiss change everything for Colin and Penelope?
That kiss, my goodness.